Plutocracy: I Lie, Therefore I Am

Submission To High Finance From Propaganda To Corruption, USA To EU:

IN EUROPE, OR ELSEWHERE. WHAT IS IT TO BE PROGRESSIVE, OR ON THE LEFT?

The debate about what is progress has been going since before Marx was a toddler. Actually, one can go back to Voltaire, and even all the way back to philosopher Abelard fighting Saint Bernard (Twelfth Century).

Abelard believed in debate (“Sic et Non”). Whereas Saint Bernard was all about having explained the world, all by himself, by following the herd, just as the average Christian gnu. Bernard, one of history’s greatest criminals, and thus, a “Saint, said, with revealing madness: ”I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind.”

Nowadays, many emulate Bernard, holding by faith that what they call the “free market” is the way to whatever they believe we are going to. In the “Free Market”, which is neither free, nor a market, banksters are free to enslave Peoples with as much interest as catches their fancy:

My answer is the simplest, to guide those who want a better, or just survivable world: You want progress, go with the truth. And truth is always from debate. That is what should guide the “left”, or whatever they want to call themselves.

Want some simple truths?

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WHY CLIMATE CRIMINALS ARE RICH:

Vanuatu was just lashed by a grade 5, maximum force hurricane. Those used to be very rare. But heat is energy, so more heat, more energy.

A truth that is simple: California is experiencing the greatest drought in millennia. This is directly related, in my learned opinion, to the general accelerated upwelling observed along such coasts, at such latitudes, worldwide.

Thus the unfolding California disaster (expect striking restrictions within weeks), is part of a much more general catastrophe.

Ironically, California, as the epicenter of USA propaganda, is punished by its own instruments.

This ecological disaster wisdom is percolating down. “70% of the unfolding catastrophes experienced today are caused by the climate change.” Just said in Japan, Laurent Fabius, the extremely experienced French Foreign Minister (an ex-Prime Minister).

His USA homologue, John Kerry warned: “future generations will not and should not forgive those who ignore this moment, no matter their reasoning… It is time, my friends, for people to do real cost accounting,” Kerry said. “The bottom line is that we can’t only factor in the price of immediate energy needs. We have to include the long-term cost of carbon pollution. We have to factor in the cost of survival. And if we do, we will find that pursuing clean energy now is far more affordable than paying for the consequences of climate change later.”

Survival is the concept I have been using for years.

When the greenhouse crisis will strike in full, BILLIONS will die. It’s not just a question of acidic seas rising. One thing will lead to another. Giant wars will erupt as ecological systems collapse.

The attack on Crimea by Putin was fully part of it: Crimea controls half of the Black Sea potential oil fields (and exploration was set to start; now it has been blocked by Western law; companies such as Chevron are blocked; corrupt and backward Russia does not have the tech). Ukraine also has potential vast reserve of Shale Oil and Gas.

One should speak of climate derangement caused by the CO2 CRISIS…

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PAY SCIENTISTS WELL, THEY WILL SAY AS PLUTO WANTS:

It turns out that some “Climate Skeptics” were paid by the fossil fuel industries. All the way to the usual suspect, Harvard University. Cash for claims, that is the faith of academics who grew up in plutocratic universities (I have spent two decades in them, I should have seen many things; I did).

Says the New York Times: “For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.”

The New York Times then details the case of a Harvard-Heritage Foundation, Asian looking (that seems more serious), prostitute, who got at least 1.2 million dollars below the table to say absurdities about CO2.

“Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.

Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.

[By the way, the recent revelation are coming, through Greenpeace, thanks to Freedom of Information Act, which acts only on government agencies, in this case the Smithsonian Institution; lying, private, plutocratic universities are not forced to reveal the corruption; and also: why did the Obama administration revealed it by itself?]

“The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University…”

The god debate in the USA is the mother of all plutocratically founded brain washing: thousands of extremely rich people in the USA work for god, and are paid by taxpayers.

Plutocrats love god, because god works for them.

As Jesus will save all Americans, Americans should just lay nailed to the cross, as plutocrats walk all over them, and just thank them for giving us a hard time, easing our way closer to you, my lord (of Wall Street).

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SWEDISH CIA WHORES CHANGING SONGS:

So Sweden, who told us that it was “illegal” to go interview Julian Assange for hard-to-believe sex charges, is changing its mind. Now that plutocrats have spent already 20 million dollars keeping him caged because he looked at a Swedish CIA woman funny.

After 1,000 days of detention in the Ecuadoran embassy, Julian Assange will be interviewed by Swedish prosecutors inside the embassy (for having sex in a non-Swedish way).

Money in the pursuit of plutocracy has no limits. This, from a government which introduced PAY TO PLAY, all over Britain, including education.

It is widely expected that, as Sweden is a stooge for the USA, Assange would be deported to the Guantanamo Archipelago, to see his human rights trampled into nothingness. Nothing personal, it’s all about terrorizing Americans.

Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Bodström

Two women admitted to consensual sexual relations with Assange, but then asked him, they said, to stop what they had agreed to, and that he did not. After this sort of interrupted coitus interruptus, one woman lauded Assange on the Internet, and to the next future victim, who proceed immediately to be equally victimized, upon apparent recommendation of the first.

It turned out that one of the accusers of Assange provided the CIA torture program called “rendition” with victims. So Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Bodström tortures, and that is OK. (That was obvious all along, as he tortured Assange for all to see.)

It obviously said something about the USA, namely that the behavior of police in Ferguson is something that the USA finds so natural (shoot first, check later) that it is anti-American to reveal it.

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HAVE THE COURAGE TO CALL POLITICIANS CORRUPT CRIMINALS:

Matthew Yglesias repeated like a parrot what I have said for many years: small-country, and even medium-countries (Sarkozy, Brown, Blair, Monti, Schroeder), or large-countries (Clinton) politicians generally have personal incentives to go along with troika, or plutocratic demands even if they are against their nation’s interests:

“Normally you would think that a national prime minister’s best option is to try to do the stuff that’s likely to get him re-elected. No matter how bleak the outlook, this is your dominant strategy. But in the era of globalization and EU-ification, I think the leaders of small countries are actually in a somewhat different situation. If you leave office held in high esteem by the Davos set, there are any number of European Commission or IMF or whatnot gigs that you might be eligible for even if you’re absolutely despised by your fellow countrymen. Indeed, in some ways being absolutely despised would be a plus. The ultimate demonstration of solidarity to the “international community” would be to do what the international community wants even in the face of massive resistance from your domestic political constituency.”

But a genuine government of the left would be very different. And this is what we have got in Greece right now with Syriza. — not because its policy ideas are wild and crazy, which they aren’t, but because its officials are never going to be held in high esteem, and great gratitude by the Davos, private jet set. Alexis Tsipras is not going to be on bank boards of directors, president of the BIS, or, probably, an EU commissioner. Neither he, nor Finance Minister Varoufakis even like to wear ties, and they have announced they won’t wear any as long as the Greek debt crisis goes on.

Yglesias’ cogent remarks are nothing new, I have been writing about them for more than a decade. OK, Yglesias is part of the establishment of sorts, he has high visibility, he went the plutocratic university par excellence, Harvard, studying philosophy, so he is supposed to be taken seriously (Krugman refers to him continuously, while censoring my declarations saying the same for years).

All right, so that leaders of small countries betray their countries to foster their careers, is not new, indeed. Draghi, for example is a pure product of AMERICAN plutocracy (PhD MIT, jobs at prestigious American Think (Sink?) Tanks, Goldman Sachs, etc.). So how come this pure pluto made in USA is one of the leaders of Europe? Because European plutocracy is the poodle of American plutocracy.

Not that I do not like Draghi. He is better than his Prussian alternatives. That was just an example.

The situation with Luxembourg and Juncker has been even worse: we are talking about 200 billions of tax evasion a year, there.

When there is no economy but corruption, Pluto is its prophet.

We need a name for all this activity. We have it: corruption.

OK, let’s take a rest. Next I will explain why, as in Greece, Nationalism may help. Syriza governs with a right wing party. In Israel, the corrupt Netanyahu may lose power to a left wing opposition which proclaims its nationalism (“Zionism”).

But it will not end before the fat lady sings, and it’s in France that she playing Valkyrie. Fear, little Plutos, the pain you visited on the world!

19 Responses to “Plutocracy: I Lie, Therefore I Am”

Sing fat lady! I can hear the notes hanging in the air, rising above the tumult and confusion. Mom’s coming ’round to put it the back the way it oughta be. Tear my tongue out or kill me, the next furry faced fucker will tell you the same. Sing fat lady sing!

Oh yes, I see. She is trying to play two flutes at once, poor girl. She has skin in the game, she thinks, because her ‘father’ started the ‘movement’. She is afraid and her fear makes her reactionary. Again, many thanks.

Well. I will write an essay on the FN. I global thinking is more at fault than Marine Le Pen. The present situation is intolerable, tragic (as Melanchon, head of the “Left Front”, just said). Things have to change, by hook, or by crook.

Global thinking is a briar patch, no doubt. What exactly is intolerable about the present situation? Not just a flip question, also my wrestling partner. Inequality due to plutocracy? I can see that and then what to do about plutocracy? My gut urge is to not tolerate it, by hook or by crook.

I’m currently going through a large report on the sustainability of cotton farming.
The World Bank drew up a typology of cotton sector structures through Western Africa.
It concluded that free market (wholly competitive) sectors performed the worst on lint quality, yield, seeds, and risk management. Their advantage on farm prices was largely offset by those.
On the other hand, well supervised monopoly (ie, state and state-controlled) sectors could perform superbly on all these points.
When you reflect that in Stiglitz’ time, the Bank was a staunch supporter and agent of liberalization (sometimes with good reason), you can see that things are moving. Only the idiot and the corrupt now have any excuse to stick with the snake oil peddlers’ “credo, quia absurdum”.

Stiglitz’ storytelling is, he was merely following orders, and he came to realize they were wrong. So he gets the benefit of the doubt.
At the time I was participating in the implementation of the Bank’s privatization schemes, and generally they did make sense at my end; I was in Africa and many state corporations were either inefficient, or extortion schemes, or both. But some did a good job and would be missed – which came to be confirmed. My reports on that line were not well received, which alerted me on the ideological nature of the Bank’s policy.
So you might call me a traitor too – once a liberal economist, now a liberal, period. And I still believe in the market’s power, if not in its benevolence. It’s just a huge beast which needs to be hobbled, castrated, trained and hitched to a cart.

Agreed.
However the main resistance discourse a la Piketty-Stiglitz-Krugman-Macron-Hollande-Merkel-Obama-Etc. completely ignores the creation of money by private (-publicly-backed-up) banks.

Now Paris and Berlin are whining that airlines from the Arabo-Persian Gulf are backed-up by the local governments and thus on their way to swallow the likes of Air France and Lufthansa (both of them malevolent companies who treated me and my family pretty badly: expensive, arrogant, and prone to thievery).

However all huge banks are like the Emirates’ airlines, on a world, and much grander basis: they are full backed-up, and in bed, with the politicians. Those politicians are not just Emirates style plutocrats, but exalted servants of the established plutocratic order, guaranteed a millionaires’ lifestyle, thereafter, be it just to buy their silent approval.

True the free market is good. Rather than an ox, or then many of them domesticated beasts, I see the free market more as a playground set-up by the State.

But the reality we have now is that it is 99% of the population that has been domesticated, and the beasts which rule. In the Silicon Valley, a guy who should know (he is/was pro-Google 100%) told me the USA government gives millions under the table to Google alone, under the table, just on one site (by not charging for usage of government airport and fuel, among other things). Inverted taxation?
PA

Very interesting Kevin! I have been writing about that for more than a decade. I even claimed that it’s the Nazis (no less) who gave the idea to the American plutocrats that God ruled the USA (they were both entangled in the Reich).

So, anyway, the article has many details I did not know (just as they do not know some more important facts I do know). So thanks a lot. I have a full subscription to the New York Times, but did not notice the article (they would probably have censored my comment, anyway, as they use said comments in part, not just to censor me, something they remind me of several times a week, but also because they pick some ideas among all my whining… ;-)… Greed is everywhere…)

I will quote some of the article in an attached comment of mine, for those who don’t have the patience to go to the NYT’s site…
PA

AMERICA may be a nation of believers, but when it comes to this country’s identity as a “Christian nation,” our beliefs are all over the map.

Just a few weeks ago, Public Policy Polling reported that 57 percent of Republicans favored officially making the United States a Christian nation. But in 2007, a survey by the First Amendment Center showed that 55 percent of Americans believed it already was one.

The confusion is understandable. For all our talk about separation of church and state, religious language has been written into our political culture in countless ways. It is inscribed in our pledge of patriotism, marked on our money, carved into the walls of our courts and our Capitol. Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.

But the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.

Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.

The two had been described as soul mates before, but in this campaign they were wedded in pointed opposition to the “creeping socialism” of the New Deal. The federal government had never really factored into Americans’ thinking about the relationship between faith and free enterprise, mostly because it had never loomed that large over business interests. But now it cast a long and ominous shadow.

Accordingly, throughout the 1930s and ’40s, corporate leaders marketed a new ideology that combined elements of Christianity with an anti-federal libertarianism. Powerful business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers led the way, promoting this ideology’s appeal in conferences and P.R. campaigns. Generous funding came from prominent businessmen, from household names like Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, E. F. Hutton, Fred Maytag and Henry R. Luce to lesser-known leaders at U.S. Steel, General Motors and DuPont.

In a shrewd decision, these executives made clergymen their spokesmen…